Bhaktivedanta Gurukula and International School Annual Magazine | Bgis | 2016-2017
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SINCE 1970 BHAKTIVEDANTA GURUKULA AND INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL ANNUAL MAGAZINE | BGIS | 2016-2017 BETTER PEOPLE | BETTER WORLD CONTENTS 01 MESSAGES 01 Message by Srila Prabhupada 01 Message by HH Gopal Krsna Maharaj 02 Message by the Director 03 02 SRILA PRABHUPADA SPEAKS 04 03 NEW PROJECT UPDATE 08 04 ACADEMICS AT BGIS 18 ISC & ICSE 2017 Board Results 18 NSTSE Preparation 18 Learning Bhagavad Gita Verses 18 05 EVENTS AT BGIS 19 Union Cabinet Minister’s Visit 19 Visit of HH Gopal Krsna Maharaj 19 BGIS Students Participate in World Peace Day 20 Students on Govardhan Parikrama & Vrindavan Parikrama 20 Farewell Ceremony of Graduating Students 22 Grade 10 Students Seek Blessings before Board Examinations 23 Special Yajna for Lord Nrisingha Dev 23 Annual Sports Day 24 06 FESTIVALS AT BGIS 25 Sri Krishna Janmashtami 2016 25 Honey Pot Festival 27 Narasimha Chaturdashi 2016 28 07 RETREATS AT BGIS 29 Rishikesh Trip 29 Chitrakoot Trip 31 Parent’s Gita Retreat 33 08 ARTICLES 34 Ekalavya and Arjuna 34 ISKCON- 50 Glorious Years of Service 37 Beyond Absolute Zero and Absolute One 44 Krishna Consciousness for Children Today 50 The Importance of Deity Worship for Children 53 Design by 09 POEMS 54 Emazing ideas Printed at maatti BETTER PEOPLE | BETTER WORLD MESSAGE BY THE FOUNDER- ACHARYA His Divine Grace A.C. BHAKTIVEDANTA SWAMI SRILA PRABHUPADA I am especially pleased to know that your Gurukula project is going forward nicely. I consider that this is one of our most important projects, because people in general are only suffering due to poor fund of knowledge. So if we have facility to give them the right knowledge of how to make an end to suffering condition of life, then we shall be performing the highest type of welfare activity. So you can carry on this point to convince rich businessmen, educators, politicians etc. to help us push forward this gurukul system for guiding their young children on the right path to becoming sober, upright citizens. You can inform them that if they give us proper facilities then we can save all the young people of their country from the worst danger. People are always willing to give anything for educational purposes. They think that if their children get the right knowledge then they will become very successful in life and that is their concern, so they sacrifice everything for good educational cause. Now their children are all becoming hippies, and they do not want so much technology and knowledge which gives them no real satisfaction, so they are losing all interest in education and only they want to enjoy life, that’s all. But if such children are given practical guidance on the transcendental platform, above the bodily and mental conception of life, then they will develop into perfect citizens- moral, honest, hard-working, law-biding, clean, faithful to home and country, like that. That is the unmatched success of our Krishna consciousness schooling system. So you introduce it nicely, so that the country’s leaders will see something very nice and come to our assistance. -Letter to Satsvarup Das Goswami Maharaj (17-12-1971) 01 BETTER PEOPLE | BETTER WORLD MESSAGE BY GBC AND BBT TRUSTEE HH GOPAL KRISHNA GOSWAMI MAHARAJ Bhaktivendanta Gurukul and International School is a school with a difference. At the present location, which is next to the Krishna Balaram temple, we can only accommodate about 300 students maximum. Parents from all over the world have been requesting us to move to a bigger location. We are happy to inform you that we have acquired 60 acres of land near Ajhai, which is 3 km from the national highway connecting Delhi to Mathura, only for quality education. The children are going to get the best education in a very conducive, eco-friendly environment. We earnestly want to request all of you to please help in developing this project. This is a project with a difference and this project will produce children with good spiritual education, good character and will be a great help to the society and humanity at large. Hare Krishna. Your well wisher in service of Srila Prabhuapada, Gopal Krishna Goswami BETTER PEOPLE | BETTER WORLD 02 MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR LILA PURUSOTTAMA DASA Dear students, parents and well-wishers Our team lead by Radhakant Das is working hard to finish the new campus so that the present Gurukula can get its new home sometime in 2018. The new home is named as Vrindaranyam. The road from the highway to the new campus has been completed – it just takes 5-10 minutes to reach Vrindaranyam from the National Highway near Jait Village. The campus boundary is complete so also the academic building. The hostel structure is ready and the finishing work is continuing. The temple foundation is also complete. We request for your prayers and support so that this project is completed in time. In the academic front, our students are doing exceedingly well. The Principal, Harikesh Prabhu and his team are striving hard to improve the academic standard. This year, two of our students got admitted to the prestigious University, BITS Pilani. One student got admission in NIT Kurukshetra while another student took admission in IIIT Allahabad. One more student got admission in National Defense Academy. I am happy to share with you that our students are graduating with flying colors. In 2016, four science students – Sanchit, Krishna Murari, Abhishek and Gaurav scored above 90% in grade 12 board examination. In grade 10 board examination, three science students scored above 90% while two commerce students also scored above 90%. In 2017, Arjun and Devavrat jointly topped the Mathura Zone in 12th grade board examination in science with thescore of 94.5%. Four students in Grade 10 board examination in science also scored more than 90%. I congratulate all our students who worked hard to perform well. My appreciations are due for all our teachers who cared for these students. We were able to organize two beautiful spiritual retreats for our students in Rishikesh and Chitrakoot – the full report is there in this magazine. These retreats are meant to inculcate the spiritual character in our boys. Our endeavor will be to organize such retreats more for our students and teachers so that we will be able to fulfill the vision of our Found- er-Acharya His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada - to incubate men of complete (Krishna Conscious) character who will be able to lead the society in many fields. “Learn Gita”, the Bhagavad Gita correspondence course, is another initiative to bring parents of our students into ambits of holistic spiritual education. In this way BGIS family will closely embrace both students and parents with an eternal umbilical cord of Lord Krishna”s instructions as given in Bhagavad Gita. I request more parents to join this pro- gram to make it successful. With the abled guidance of our GBC HH Gopal Krishna Maharaja, we are striving hard to take this school to a greater height for which I humbly acknowledge the self-less contributions of our teachers and staff. Not the least, I thank Ra- ghunath Prabhu for putting commendable effort to bring out this edition of the school magazine. Hare Krishna Lila Purusottama Dasa ( Professor, IIT Kanpur ) 03 BETTER PEOPLE | BETTER WORLD 02 SpeaksSrila Prabhupada Dharma and The Modern World By His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (The following article was first published in Bengali in The Gaudiya, November 11th, 1949) In relation to dharma, the Vaisnava acarya Srila scientific world, educated people are taking great Bhaktivinoda Thakura Mahasaya, has written in his care to come to a common understanding about the book Sri Caitanya-siksamrta as follows – origins of dharma. Upon examining the historical records of all types To begin to understand dharma scientifically we of people around the world, it becomes obvious must first look at our scripture, the Gita. The that faith in God is man’s common and constant Supreme Personality of Godhead, Sri Krsna has characteristic. Uncivilised forest tribals survive, like specially discussed the three fundamental principles animals, on animal flesh, but they also worship the of tattva in the second chapter of the Gita, namely sun, the moon, huge mountains, large rivers and tall body, mind and consciousness. Earth, air, fire, trees as their benefactors and controllers. Why do ether and water – these are the five gross elements, they do this? Though the soul is extremely bound and mind, intelligence, and false-ego – these are up, his faith in the Lord, his natural quality as a the three subtle elements and altogether these spirit soul, will gradually manifest to the degree that eight elements are considered as inferior material the material covering is weakened. However, when nature. The conscious element is the living entity man becomes civilised and takes to various types of which is indestructible, inexhaustible, eternal, knowledge and education, his faith becomes more permanent and even when the aged body and mind covered due to materialistic logic. Then atheism, or gets destroyed it continues to exist – this topic worse, voidism, takes hold of his mind. has been discussed in the Gita. Before we discuss the development of various types of sadhana for Of the various kinds of dharma existing in this world, aspirants such as karma, jnana, yoga, bhakti etc. almost all of them aim to preach and establish belief it is especially important to discuss the process in God. Varying endeavors of acaryas depending on mentioned in Gita in relation to consciousness. time, place and circumstances, can be observed, but Without doing so, it is not possible to come to any it can be ascertained that all of them preach dharma scientific understanding or conclusion on dharma.